So you've made sauce and pies and muffins and quick breads. You've done plenty of snacking and packing them into lunch boxes. Maybe you've even offered them up as fodder for fondue. Yet a few spare apples still linger from your picking excursion.

"It is the true cook who can look into the fridge and come up with recipes when all that remains in the fruit bin are apples," says Ruth Cousineau, Gourmet magazine test kitchen director.

She suggests several quick and easy ways to use spare apples to give new dimension to your food.

- Finely chop an apple, then toss with sliced onion, diced jalapeno and a squirt of lime juice for a zesty salsa that would be excellent with chips or spooned over grilled fish.

- For breakfast or brunch, grate apples into pancake batter with a pinch of cinnamon. Top with a syrup made from chopped apples, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon. Or spoon the syrup over yogurt or ice cream.

- For unexpected deliciousness, stick a few slices of apple under some havarti for a great grilled cheese sandwich.

And if you can't resist cranking out another pie, Cousineau suggests using apples that keep their shape, such as Galas, Golden Delicious, Jonathan and Granny Smith.

"And while nothing beats a crisp autumn MacIntosh or Macoun for eating out of hand, they mush down when baked, so save them for making apple sauce," she says.